Armed militants targeted police stations, railway lines, and vehicles on in south western Pakistan on a highway on Sunday night. This attack has killed over 50 people. Over 30 vehicles were set ablaze, officials said.
A rail line between Pakistan and Iran and a railway bridge linking Quetta to the rest of the country were also hit with explosives in militant attacks, railways official Muhammad Kashif said.
Around the same time, militants also targeted police and security stations in the sprawling province, one of which killed at least 10 people.
The attack took place in the province of Balochistan. The militants took passengers off the vehicles, checked their identity cards and then shot them. A senior superintendent of police, Ayub Achakzai has confirmed.
The largest of the attacks targeted vehicles from buses to goods trucks on a major highway, killing at least 23 people, officials said, with 35 vehicles set ablaze.
In a statement, the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) group has taken responsibility for the incident. It said its fighters identified the targeted military personnel travelling in civilian clothes and then shot them.
However, the interior ministry said the dead were innocent citizens.
Rise Of Militancy
Militants targeted workers from the eastern province of Punjab whom they see as exploiting their resources. They are fighting a decades-old ethnic insurgency to demand the secession of resource-rich Balochistan from Pakistan.
Militants have targeted workers from the eastern province of Punjab whom they see as exploiting their resources. In the past, they have also targeted Chinese interests and citizens operating in the province.
China runs the strategic deepwater port of Gawadar in Balochistan’s south, as well as a gold and copper mine in the west.
The office of Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif condemned the attack in a statement. He said that security forces would retaliate and bring those responsible to justice.
In a similar incident in April this year, nine passengers were offloaded from a bus and their IDs were checked in Balochistan. They were then shot dead.
Several Western countries, including the UK and US, have designated the BLA as a global terrorist organisation.
(With inputs from Reuters)
